Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, delivered a stern message
to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir in their meeting in Juba on
October 24: the United States is “disappointed” in Kiir’s leadership and
he must not take US assistance for granted. In a stark reminder of the
perilous situation in the six-year-old nation, Haley was later forced to hastily evacuate South Sudan after a group of anti-Kiir protesters turned violent.

The crisis in Spain dramatically escalated on October 27 with
Catalonia’s regional parliament declaring independence and the Spanish
Senate responding with the approval of unprecedented powers for Madrid
to seize control of the autonomous region.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on October 21 announced his government’s intention to remove the leaders of Catalonia’s regional government and called for elections to be held as soon as possible.

The United States should update, revitalize, and defend the
rules-based international order while considering “hard-headed”
engagement with China, according to the latest in a series of Atlantic
Council strategy papers.

As the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is driven from its
strongholds in Syria, US-backed forces face the challenge of stabilizing
these conflict-ravaged territories.

This task is made more
urgent by the fact that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and
Iran-backed militias are swooping in on eastern Syria in an attempt to
capitalize on ISIS’ defeat, said Frederic C. Hof, director of the
Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

The
military action, which pits two US allies against each other, followed a
September 25 referendum in which the Kurds voted for an independent
state. The Iraqi government had declared the vote unconstitutional.
Kirkuk, which is not part of Iraqi Kurdistan but was under Kurdish
control at the time, took part in the referendum. (Kurdish forces had
controlled Kirkuk since 2014 when Iraqi forces fled as Islamic State of
Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) militants advanced on the city.)

As expected, US President Donald J. Trump on October 13 announced
that he will not certify Iran’s compliance with the terms of a
multilateral nuclear deal, accusing the Islamic Republic of “not living
up to the spirit” of the agreement.

While Trump did not take the
United States out of the deal, he asserted the right to do so and
warned that he would if the US Congress does not make amendments to the
agreement.

In light of the escalating tensions, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano
Rajoy is now toying with the idea of invoking the never-before-used
Article 155 of the Spanish constitution that would suspend Catalonia’s
regional autonomy. With a view to taking such action, Rajoy on October
11 asked the region’s leaders whether they had formally declared independence from Spain.

The expectation that US President Donald J. Trump will decertify the nuclear deal with Iran this week raises the question: what would be the implications of decertification?

Trump faces an October 15 deadline to certify to the US Congress that
Iran is complying with the terms of the nuclear agreement that the
Islamic Republic struck with the five permanent members of the United
Nations (UN) Security Council plus Germany in 2015. The deal cuts off
Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon.

There is a strong likelihood that US President Donald J. Trump will
withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), Robert Zoellick, a former US trade representative, said at the
Atlantic Council on October 5, while advising US lawmakers to be
prepared to push back.

Catalonia would lose membership of the European Union (EU) if it were to
declare independence from Spain—a development that would have serious
economic consequences for this affluent region, according to the
Atlantic Council’s Fran Burwell.